Godwin’s law is out of date when it comes to Trump, since the comparisons to Nazism are legion by this point. However in the last seven days Herr Trump (or, if you prefer, Hair Trump) has absolutely reaffirmed his resemblance to Hitler in pretty much every way imaginable.
Trump is legendary for his incessant sleight of hand, conman powers of distraction. The oldest magician’s trick in the world: spouting misdirection to make us ignore one thing by distracting us with another. The GOP passed a tax cut that highly favored the richest individuals and attempted to repeal health care seventy times. Yet now they are endeavoring to run away from their actions, repeating incessantly the lie that they support health care for preexisting conditions and want to provide tax cuts for the middle class. Obviously they hope that if they say it enough times, credulous voters will ignore their records and forget things that they witnessed with their own eyes. Which of course might very well work for some of them.
But Trump realizes that more is required, because people are stupid but they’re not THAT stupid. And so he is following Hitler’s playbook, using the powers of the office to try and scare his followers…in this case, to get them to the voting booths.
Because that’s what it’s all about in today’s world of politics. It’s not about issues. It’s not about character. It’s about fear. Scare the voters enough and hopefully they will turn out in large enough numbers to prevent the evil Democrats from throwing open the borders (because what are we, anyway? A nation of immigrants or something?) and repealing health care.
So let’s see what Herr Trump has been up to.
1). The Others are evil.. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I on the Jews, and pretty much everything else that was going wrong in Germany. Since Europe had a solid history of anti-Semitism, that blended right in and played to peoples’ beliefs. America likewise has a tradition of fear and hatred for outsiders, whether it’s black slaves, Asians, the Irish, and of course Jews. Trump has been playing to this hatred going back to the days when he wouldn’t rent apartments to blacks and the very beginning of his campaign when he launched with the fear technique of talking about all those evil Mexicans: the gang members, the drug dealers, the rapists, etc. Now he’s got a brand new talking point: a caravan of desperate immigrants who are on foot and schlepping toward the United States. They are currently over 2000 miles away. Average human foot speed is four miles an hour, but over a third of the travelers are children, so let’s assume they’re moving at two miles an hour, ten hours a day. This so-called invasion won’t be at the border for at least a hundred days, assuming any of them make it that far.
Yet Trump and his cronies are claiming that they are bringing diseases such as leprosy (with no evidence, of course) and smallpox (declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980). And people are genuinely buying into it, convinced that they are only days away from having the Walking Dead swarm over the borders illegally, as opposed to what they are doing which is applying for asylum.
And of course Mr. Conspiracy Theory even has his own notion about who is behind the caravan: the Jews. Specifically, one Jew, philanthropist George Soros. Because of course there is a grand tradition of seeing Jewish influence behind everything. The Jews must be stopped because they are trying to use immigrants to do away with white Christianity. We know this because the Pittsburgh shooter made it quite clear before he killed people.
Not to be too Jewish about this, but the concept of the POTUS condemning an exodus of desperate people strikes most definitely home. The fact that his daughter is a converted Jew does nothing to excuse the hatred he’s been spreading that has caused everything from shootings to attempting bombings. He is creating at atmosphere of hate, and there are plenty of people out there breathing it in deeply and letting loose their inner hatred and homicidal mania.
2). Camps.. Trump, in addition to dispatching thousands of troops to stand around with their fingers up their áššëš for the next three months, loves the idea of setting up encampments where the refugees will live for…well, forever. Camps where they can live in concentrations of people. Granted, he hasn’t suggested gas chambers to execute them, but he has zero interest in helping them enter the country to become citizens. He just wants to imprison them, on no charges, for good. Just like Hitler did with the Jews or, for that matter, FDR did with the Japanese. Ignore their rights. Ignore their desires. Ignore their pleas to be treated like any other people seeking asylum. Just stick them in camps. That’s the ticket.
3). The Great Dictator.. Remember that whole procedure about states having to ratify changes in the Constitution? Trump doesn’t care about that. He is convinced that he can unilaterally change a constitutional amendment with a wave of his executive power. His supporters immediately scream “Obama! DACA!” completely oblivious to the fact that using an executive order to expand an existing policy to help people is lightyears away from using an executive order to change the constitution in order to hurt people. But that is of course what he wants to do. Screw congress, screw the states. He wants to change unilaterally the Fourteenth Amendment to declare that its assurance of people being born here were American citizens is no longer applicable. “We’re the only country that has that policy!” he declares, oblivious of the thirty others that have similar policies including both Canada and Mexico.
This is why it’s useless to claim thet Trump lies. Lying requires intent to deceive. You have to know that you are stating falsehoods. I think more often than not, he really doesn’t know. He says whatever occurs to him and just assumes that if he said it, it’s true, QED. His cries of “fake news” are really condemnations of reporters who are writing the truth that he doesn’t like, which is any truth that is critical of him…which is pretty much all of them. Trump literally doesn’t know what the truth is, nor does he care. According to CNN, for instance, on October 22 he told untruths eighty-three times. All those people who try to claim all politicians lie must understand that yes, sometimes they do. But not ALL THE TIME. Not INCESSANTLY. Not EVERY TIME THEY OPEN THEIR MOUTHS.
And yet he claims that he can single handedly rewrite the constitution.
Let’s project this: He issues an executive order to rewrite the fourteenth amendment. It gets fast tracked to the Supreme Court and his judges are actually insane enough to say yes, the President can change the constitution via executive order. Fine. Has he considered that the next Democrat to take office will use that precedent to abolish the Second Amendment? Executive order, SCOTUS backed it, boom, it’s gone. Done deal. The NRA can howl all they want; their man lay the groundwork.
It would almost be worth it to see that happen. Almost.
Did he do anything right? . Remember all the crap he stirred up with China and trade wars? Ostensibly he is making arrangements with a trade agreement that is sparking a turnaround on Wall Street. So I suppose it’s good in the same sense that the Fantastic Four, in their first movie (not the Corman one, the one after that, that featured Captain America as the Torch) managed to defeat Doctor Doom. Except Doom’s creation entirely came about because Reed Richards talked him into joining them on a space experiment that went insanely wrong. Doom’s anger against Reed was totally justified and the FF were basically doing damage control for Reed’s screw up. So apparently Trump is managing to undo some of the stupidity that he launched. Yay, I guess?
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“Let’s project this: He issues an executive order to rewrite the fourteenth amendment. It gets fast tracked to the Supreme Court and his judges are actually insane enough to say yes, the President can change the constitution via executive order. Fine. Has he considered that the next Democrat to take office will use that precedent to abolish the Second Amendment? Executive order, SCOTUS backed it, boom, it’s gone. Done deal. The NRA can howl all they want; their man lay the groundwork.”
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Of course he has considered it, as have the alt-right idiots, neo-cons, and various Republicans around him. Well, more the those groups and conservative think tanks and less Trump when it comes to considering it. I doubt Trump thinks in terms beyond the immediate, let alone four or five steps ahead.
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What do you think Kavanaugh was all about which regards to the ferocity with which senior Republicans fought to ram him through no matter what? Various idiots I know started ranting in discussions and debates during the Ford hearings about how it was all about the Dems wanting to stop a pro-life judge from getting on the bench, which was, nuts. That may be in there somewhere, but all of his picks were going to be pro-life. The Dems aren’t going to go as far out as to manufacture “victims” just for Kavanaugh, and, frankly, with a ton more pro-life judges waiting in the wings, the Republicans had no reason to pull the šhìŧ they did to protect the Kavanaugh nomination. The likely reality was it was far, far more about two things that the Republicans wanted.
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They (and Trump) likely wanted protection from the Special Counsel for as long as possible. Kavanaugh, should a case go to the SCOTUS, isn’t going to let Trump face a subpoena or anything else he can prevent; especially now.
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The Republicans? For them, it was about getting a partisan with a chip on his shoulder through no matter what. Why? Because it’s their game now. They have most of the court and an ace in the hole.
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Typically, a SCOTUS ruling sets the precedent for the cases heard in lesser courts as well as for future cases that would go to the SCOTUS. It’s part of the process. Why have a case go all the way to the SCOTUS if they just ruled on the exact same basic case a few months ago? But it doesn’t always play out that way.
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Remember the 2000 election case? The ruling had a bit added to it that said the ruling in that case would not set precedent. It was a one and done. It was a standalone ruling.
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The Democrats or somebody else challenges Trump’s EO. It goes to the SCOTUS.
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Ruling? 5-4 in Trump’s favor with the additional bit that, because the case looked at the very specific matters involved with this EO and this Amendment, you can’t really have it set precedent for any future cases involving Presidential EOs and the Constitution.
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So, a Democrat gets into office and writes an EO enforcing the “well regulated militia” part of the 2nd in order to qualify for ownership of any firearm over a certain level. It gets challenged. It goes to the SCOTUS. They rule, based on the matters involved with this EO and this Amendment, an EO cannot change the Constitution to this degree.
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Or any degree so long as it’s a Democrat in the White House.
So much for the renewed trade talks with China. A couple of members of Trump’s staff said that were NO talks with China and that made the stock market tank again. Gee, what a surprise…
“Has he considered that the next Democrat to take office will use that precedent to abolish the Second Amendment?”
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Very first thing that occurred to me.
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Beyond the obvious fact that a President can’t just change the Constitution, how does the it not immediately occur to folks that this would be the world’s sharpest double edged blade?
And then, after dispensing with the 2nd, the next thing a Democratic President could do is eliminate the 22nd. Hello, third term!
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Hëll, why bother to eliminate an Amendment when you could just make one:
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Amendment 28: In Article II, Section 1, paragraph 1 “during the Term of four Years” is replaced with “for life”.
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Boom. Done.
Regarding Godwin’s Law, if there is one thing these last years taught me is that most human beings are really gullible, and I finally understand how demagogues like Hitler get into power.
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People believe the most ridiculous lies when there is a crisis going on, and someone with the appearance of strength appears to take advantage of it, and the lies conform to their own prejudices.
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In my country, the lie that swept our Fascist president that goes into office next year was that the Workers’s Party was going to implement a Chavez-Castro style socialist dictatorship if they won.
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It makes no frigging sense, since the Workers’s Party ruled the country for 13 years and no socialist dictatorship ever materialized, in fact they completely caved in to free trade capitalism.
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But people actually believed in this monstrous lie. Why? Most of them aren’t stupid, most of them aren’t really fanatics. I can’t completely understand it myself, but part of it is that they have strong prejudices and negative feelings about the Workers’s Party and poor people in general. So that these grandiose lies that they don’t believe in at some rational level become extremely pleasurable in other, deeper, more emotional levels.
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I’m sure most Americans don’t really believe Trump’s lies. But they WANT to believe in them, because they conform to their prejudices.
Mike Godwin is the man who invented Godwin’s Law. Here’s what he tweeted about referring to the Alt-Right as “Nazis”:
And there you have it: Godwin’s Law has been suspended for the duration by its inventor in relation to the Alt-Right.
Look at the Americans you know.
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Imagine the Trump supporters.
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Now, imagine the hosts on Fox News.
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And the conservative talk radio crew.
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And the writers at Breitbart, RedState, Gateway Pundit, etc.
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Now imagine all of them reacting to President Obama a week removed from a huge terrorism incident on US soil and with major figures in the opposition party as the targets of that and less than a week out from a mass shooting hate crime standing in front of multiple crowds of supporters and lamenting the fact that these two events took attention off of his and his party’s election campaigning and took momentum way from their midterm efforts.
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Hëll, for that matter, replace Obama with any Democrat and probably more than a few average Republicans.
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Now, rather than imagining all of those people, take an actual look at them.
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They don’t care. They’re cheering him. They’re joining in on the conspiracy theory that the MSM used these events- some still claiming them to be Democrat false flag events to frame and derail conservatives before the election -to damage Trump and the momentum Trump built.
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If Obama did this? The outrage would be off the charts and they would be demanding that he be removed from office.
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If Obama did this? most the liberals I know would be saying Obama had said something stupid if not downright vulgar.
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People died, but it was about him and his team’s momentum?
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There’s not an Obama supporter who was ever a regular on this blog who would not be saying that Obama said and did something colossally stupid and vulgar if it was him up there rather than Trump. I know for a fact that there are conservatives who used to post here regularly who are attacking liberals for criticizing Trump for doing it and acting like Trump didn’t do anything wrong.
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And those same individuals couldn’t bring themselves to condemn the #MAGAbomber (before we knew him as the #MAGAbomber) because it was an obvious false flag hoax staged by the Democrats to save their chances in the face of a red wave election. Even as the evidence started coming out, it was all about a dupe who was being set up and used as patsy to pin the crime on conservatives/Trump supporters.
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Donald Trump represents three things to many- perhaps most -of his followers. These three things are the cult of personality borne on the aura of celebrity, tribalism, and the allure for many of them for feeling like the victim or the oppressed when they’re anything but.
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We’ve been watching that last one growing more and more over the years in the conservative movement. White Christian males in particular, men who have more than many of the people they hate, moving towards a constant state of fake victimhood that they perceive as real or at least claim is real.
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Listen to conservatives in America. Christianity is under attack. Christianity is under siege. God isn’t allowed in the culture and the places he needs to be. There’s a war on Christmas. Christians are the only acceptable people you can be bigoted against in America.
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If you’re a straight white male, you’re life is hëll these days. Who has it made? You’re life is Easy street if you’re a gay/trans black woman. Everything will be handed to you then, but straight white males are the new pariah class in America.
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Don’t have the job you think you deserve? Those brown people took it from you. Either the black man that got in above you only because of affirmative action or the Mexican who took your job because the liberals love getting illegals into the country.
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They’re discriminated against because the left is intolerant. They’re just trying to keep gays from having access to marriage, adoption, or spousal rights while refusing them service and calling them abominations against God and nature, but it’s those Gød-dámņëd intolerant liberals ruining their lives by calling them bigots and homophobic and letting the “fágš” destroy real marriage in this country and get their pedophile hands on little kids.
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It’s not the rich white guy who runs a multi-billion dollar corporation and chose to send all of the area manufacturing jobs to India and replaced most of the remaining jobs with automation who is to blame for tanking the local economy by sending everyone to low paying jobs or unemployment. No, it’s the liberals who brought “those people” into the country or who said that dumping chemical waste into the water was wrong and thus made their jobs too cost prohibitive to keep.
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And when reality won’t conform to their desires? It’s that Gød-dámņëd liberal media lying to them and trying to destroy their lives.
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The Tea Party started figuring out how to really play that card to them after years of Rush and crew warming it up, but Trump absolutely mastered it.
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They’re victims. They’re the victims of the foreigners, the media, the blacks, the liberals, etc, etc, etc… He pushes that concept all the time. And that’s a powerful weapon when you have a receptive audience.
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He talks to them like they’re 5th graders, he tells them that all those people did them wrong and are out to get them, and then talks about how he and only he is finally here for them. He’s gonna make America great again, he’s gonna make them great again, by fighting for them and fighting off all those people who are the ones who are really responsible for all of the failures they see in their life and the oppression they face for being white, straight, and Christian.
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And, that’s even with stupid things. Do you remember one of the things Trump (and then many of his surrogates) said the first December after his election? Because he was elected, we could finally say “Merry Christmas” in this country again.
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It was an idiotic notion to even imply that we weren’t allowed to before November 2016 or were only now able to again because of Trump. People were saying Merry Christmas all over this country. Businesses were saying it in ads. The President who lived in the White House for eight years before Trump moved in said it.
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But there were Trump surrogates in the media and a small ton of Trump supporters who were acting as if this was a real thing. We were finally able to say “Merry Christmas” again thanks to the new Messiah, Donald Trump, fighting the evil liberals and their vile war on Christianity and Christmas.
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Because they were being victimized before Trump came along and saved them. And that’s just the stupid, fictional war on Christmas.
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When Trump plays to that mindset on matters in their daily lives that really mean something to them? They want to believe. Whatever it is, it’s a problem caused by those people. They did it, they caused it.
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Once Trump hooks them with that? They’ll follow him anywhere. They will happily sell out and cast aside their integrity, their long-held beliefs, and any desire to recognize the difference between fact and fiction in order to believe that they’ve been victims and that Trump will save them.
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Looking at some of what happened in your country, especially that bit you cited, many of your countrymen did exactly what many of mine did when they sold their souls for a place in Trumplandia.
Jerry,
I assume that you have never lost a job because you were white, and the other candidate was Filipino? (SP???) I have…
Or maybe you lost your job because you were so lazy that you couldn’t even be bothered to take ten seconds to verify the spelling of Filipino. Just a thought.
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PAD
Maybe he was better qualified for the job than you.
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I’ve lost out on jobs and promotions over the years that went to women, Hispanics, Asians, blacks, various sexual persuasions, etc.
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Do you know what I always did? I found out what was lacking in my background or qualifications and sought to add it in there before the next opportunity opened up.
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Usually worked.
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But, then, I guess that’s why I’m not a Trump supporter. I never thought it was someone else’s fault, and I never needed a great white saviour to come and make it better for me.
Well, I doubt that Peter has ever lost a job due to being white, but if “Previews” is anything to go by, he seems to have lost his current job due to extremely crappy sales.
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“I never thought it was someone else’s fault…”
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But when anything Peter does goes belly-up, it is ALWAYS someone else’s fault. That’s been his story for years, and as a loyal Peter David supporter, it’s your job to back it up. You don’t want him to get angry and slime another central european ethnic group, do you?
Jack Riegel: “But when anything Peter does goes belly-up, it is ALWAYS someone else’s fault. That’s been his story for years…”
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Luigi Novi: I don’t believe that to be true, as I seem to recall a couple of times when Peter freely acknowledged that sales weren’t what they could’ve been on Captain Marvel, Supergirl, and She-Hulk.
Supergirl, which always gets cancelled (the current one cancelled even with a TV series going). She-Hulk, which always gets cancelled. Although I’m sure that Jack will blame me for those recent cancellations as well. Meanwhile Captain Marvel is selling well, but is a totally different character.
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Ignore him, Luigi. He has only one purpose being here- trolling.
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He’s not a fan, he has no interest in anything other than attacking Peter and anyone else who points out Jack’s stupidity. In the last few threads he was in, he, in rather Trumpian fashion, simply made up things I said, Peter said, others said here and presented them as fact before attacking over those made up by him statements.
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He’s like a nonpolitical X-Ray with all the fealty to the truth, facts, and reality that Mike had back in the day.
Jerry –
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Yeah, Bolsonaro’s fans did a lot of the same things here. They used Trump’s playbook. Honestly, I had been following international news and knew a thing or two about history, so it was deeply upsetting, like watching a nightmare unfolding twice over, while most of my friends and co-workers didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation.
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There is no fake War on Christmas thing here (Brazil has too few Jews, Muslims, or atheists for it to be a thing), but there was a whole lot of grief about “Gender Theory”.
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Conservatives somehow managed to get themselves convinced that Liberals are teaching all little children that they can choose their gender. And that they must be stopped.
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It’s total bûllšhìŧ, of course. Gender Theory is a thing restricted to some higher learning circles and snobby art circles. The idea that they’re teaching it to pre-schoolers is a monstrous lie. Yet, Conservatives bought it. Every news story about one male kid wearing a dress is a sign of Armaggedon.
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And there is a lot more of stuff like that in their echo chamber. It’s like they live in another planet. Another example, Brazil has always had a lot of crime. But the thing is, it’s always been mostly restricted to poor neighbourhoods, in our very unequal society.
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Bolsonaro’s fans somehow managed to get convinced that they need gun laws like those in the USA to defend themselves. Because crime is knocking on their door. It’s bûllšhìŧ again, because most of the hardened Bolsonaro fans are middle class or wealthier. They don’t have any contact with violent urban crime.
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Bolsonaro’s political ads looked like parody to be, like something out of The Naked Gun. I couldn’t believe how people took him seriously. But they did. He really managed to convince half of Brazilians that we’re close to the abyss and only he can save us. Things are tough, yes, they always are. But there is no abyss, except the one Bolsonaro himself is creating.
Wow.
Do you do requests?
Does who do what requests?
It’s also been observed that people are intellectually lazy and illiterate, and don’t understand or are bored by the subtleties of some of these issues that feel to be “distant” from their day-to-day concerns. It’s for this reason, according to one opinion I read, that the Trump cult doesn’t care that Russia meddled in our elections, or that Trump has thrown all 17 of our intelligence agencies under the bus who have evidence of this: They care more about their job, and what’s going to help them drive their kids to work each day, put food on the table, etc.
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If only they considered that it didn’t have to be one or the other.
Philip Pino? Was he part of the horn section for Herb Alpert?
Sorry, the question was because that was what my spell checker came up with, and it didn’t seem right. Seems like it should start with PH instead…
As for the job, that was the OFFICIAL reason I did not receive the job. The interview committee also happened to be the department diversity committee as well.
Real reason, he was already in the position, and they were just going through the motions.
Philippines – Country in Asia
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Population: 101,218,000 (2013 est.)
Capital: Manila
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Filipino – People
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Filipinos are the people who are native to or identified with the country of the Philippines. Filipinos come from various ethnolinguistic groups that are native to the island country. Currently, there are more than 175 ethnolinguistic groups, each with its own language, identity, culture, and history.
Godwin’s law is out of date when it comes to Trump, since the comparisons to Nazism are legion by this point. However in the last seven days Herr Trump (or, if you prefer, Hair Trump) has absolutely reaffirmed his resemblance to Hitler in pretty much every way imaginable.
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I have followed Peter David’s blog for years. Before that I always read his column in CBG. I read his Hulk, Supergirl and Fallen Angel comics. He and I share love for the writings of Harlan Ellison. I have a FOE button from that long ago campaign. Our political positions diverge but that is not a deal breaker for me.
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For the past couple of years his blog has been much more political than not; to its detriment in my opinion. His non-political columns elicit more participation than the political ones. The column “Is Rey a Mary Sue?” in September had 58 posts. The Freak Out Friday columns rarely get than many responses.
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And now Goodwin’s Law is suspended. By Goodwin himself no less.
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Give this column a read. It is shorter than some of Jerry’s posts and a lot less pedantic.
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https://regiehammblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/this-hitler-nonsense/
Yes, and my birthday post got 23, and my piece on Talos the Untamed got exactly thirteen. Rey got a lot of responses because it’s Star Wars, and that will always drag Star Wars fans out of the woodwork to comment. I’ve learned not to measure my postings by their responses. You are free to do so. Or if you want to become yet another one of those idiots who scolds me for daring to comment on political issues, by all means, feel free.
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PAD
Not scolding, just an observation.
Well, as I pointed out, an entirely incorrect one.
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PAD
Not on the “”For the past couple of years his blog has been much more political than not” part.
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I’ve enjoyed your writing since you killed Jean DeWolff. I agree with most of your politics (although at times you’re more strident than I think needed to make your point).
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And I hope someday to see you get back to this blog not being solely Trump rants.
Well, I also used to do Cowboy Pete here, but that’s moved over to my Patreon page.
Well, George, you might THINK that the column “Is Rey a Mary Sue?” is “non-political” but, bear in mind that there’s been a LOT of chat on the whole issue of Rey that IS most assuredly of a “political” bent since commentary criticizing a female lead character crosses the line between “social” and “political”; there is a thing called “sociopolitical.”
Unfortunately.
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I’m kinda sick of how everything these days must be dissected and made into a battlefield in the cultural wars.
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This is one situation where both the right and the left are to blame.
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Until a few years ago, you’d have a handful of eccentrics and college folks eager to analyse all pop culture through the lens of Christianity or Feminism or Marxism or Objectivism. But those folks were seem as cranks or snobby college folk.
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Now it has become mainstream (or even mandatory) to micro-analyze every last bit of pop culture through the lens of whatever ideology that person holds dear.
Wow . A blog post by a conservative saying it’s silly to compare Trump or his actions to Hitler in any way at all. I’m shocked- SHOCKED! -that a conservative would write that.
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He seems terribly upset in another post that women who have been sexually assaulted are completely ng forward and saying they were sexually assaulted.
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Skimmed a few other posts. They read like they’re half incel, half Proud Boy rhetoric.
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Okay.
Jerry, you may be shocked, (that Casablanca line never gets old), but your comments do not dispute anything Mr. Hamm said regarding comparisons of Trump to Hitler
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Also read a little of Regie Hamms bio. He is 180° from a Proud Boy or an incel.
He’s also incorrect here.
Jerry, I’m not sure, but that might be the shortest response you’ve ever posted. Back on Oct. 26th. you said “Look, I’m going to sound like a broken record here…” I considered posting that you sound more like a broken Russian novel.
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Anyway, not sure who is incorrect that you are referring to, me or Regie Hamm, but I find it telling that your response to his column was to insult him.
It was in response to Mr. Hamm.
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And my first response was not to insult him. My first response was to laugh at him.
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My first response here was also not to insult him, it was, first, describing his one post where he seemed upset that women he knew who were sexually assaulted were coming forward to say they were sexually assaulted, but he was upset that they were coming forward, not that they were assaulted. It was then, second, pointing out that skimming his other posts made him come across as regurgitating talking points from some conservative fringe groups.
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If I had wanted to insult him, I would have pointed out what a fûçkwìŧ he seemed to come across as in several posts.
George –
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The day Trump said that there were some very fine people on both sides, when one of the sides was shouting that Jews were not going to replace them, and several other Nazi slogans, was the day I said to myself: “screw Godwin’s Law.” You can’t have it both ways, if you pal around with Nazis, and quote Nazis, and stand up for Nazis, don’t go bawling if people say you’re in the same political family as them.
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Does it mean Trump is as bad as Hitler? Of course not. Just like not every communist or fellow traveler is as bad as Stalin or Pol Pot or other genocidal monsters. It just means that it’s perfectly reasonable to make comparisions to Nazism, when the guy is a pal in this growing Racist-Nationalist international movement.
Rene, I have read that tripe about Trump saying there were good people on both sides to mean he was referring to the the Nazis as one of the sides since Charlottesville. That is simply wrong and has been debunked since then. He was referring to the groups who were at odds about removing Confederate statues. Now you may believe there is no difference, but a respectful case can be made for the statues that is far from being a Nazi position. Personally, I think the statues should be removed if they were erected during the Civil Rights era as an effort to intimidate. If they existed since well before that, then they should stay. History should not be rewritten.
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I am reminded of an old Cold War Soviet expression pertaining to former Soviet officials who were removed from their history books, “We know the future. It is the past that keeps changing.”
False.
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Sorry, George, but, as much as I hear and see conservatives running defense for Trump’s comments, it never fails to get a laugh.
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In the back and forth with the reporters, Trump did, in fact, define who his very fine people were in the next minute or so after defining them as very fine people.
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REPORTER: “I just didn’t understand what you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?”
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TRUMP: “No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly, the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call ‘em. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know, I don’t know if you know, but they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this: there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country.”
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The people that had a permit? That was Unite the Right. That was the alt-right and white supremacists.
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Not the people from the day of the riot, but those nice, very fine people from the night before.
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The people the night before were the ones carrying torches and spewing vile garbage about blood and soil and Jews not replacing them.
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The very best defense you can try is that the man who stood there and declared he knew more about it than everyone else in the room had- as per usual -no clue what he was talking about. But he’s stood by it for so long now, that doesn’t work anymore either.
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He also tried to float the nonsensical, made up “alt-left” label for the other side. The “alt-left” label was made up by the white supremacists and some of their rightwing media voices to create some appearance of equivalence. It was just more of the conservative’s specialty- false equivalencies and whataboutisms.
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Here is a larger part of the same exchange and a link to the full transcript.
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REPORTER: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides?
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TRUMP: I do think there is blame – yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at, you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either. And, and, and, and if you reported it accurately, you would say.
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REPORTER: The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville.
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TRUMP: Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
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REPORTER: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.
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TRUMP: Oh no, George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down – excuse me. Are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay, good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue? You know what? It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.
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REPORTER: I just didn’t understand what you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?
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TRUMP: No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly, the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call ‘em. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know, I don’t know if you know, but they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this: there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country. Does anybody have a final – does anybody have a final question? You have an infrastructure question.
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Full text: Trump’s comments on white supremacists, ‘alt-left’ in Charlottesville
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662
Thanks, Jerry. Informative as always.
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Why, George? Why go to all this mental gymnastics to defend a man that is so obviously unworth even of the effort you make to come to his defense? This is what I don’t get about right-wingers.
Because it’s not about Trump anymore. It’s about themselves. What it comes down to is this: They have come to the realization that the election wasn’t a show, a character that Trump made up to win. That’s what they were telling themselves. They believed that once he became President, he would drop the act and become more “presidential.” That hasn’t happened. That stuff about Mexicans being rapists and drug addicts and gang members? He believed that, just as he believes it of the caravan. And he really does hate blacks and their šhìŧhølë countries.
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Now some of his supporters have come to their senses. They’re saying that supporting Trump was the worst mistake they ever made. They’re voting Democratic on Tuesday.
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But far too many of them simply cannot accept or admit that they were hosed by a con man. It can’t be that they were wrong about him. It’s that WE are wrong about him. And they will produce whatever scattershot, illogical, insane defense that they can. Everything from Whataboutism to quoting whatever bûllšhìŧ Fox News is currently spouting. And on occasion even isolated people on Fox News call him out, an action so rare that when it happens, it gets news coverage. Critiques of Trump being NEWS. That’s how deep Fox is in Trump’s pocket, that it’s news when they break rank. They even twist facts, claiming that the Democrats took actions that were actually taken by the right. Their politicians, who tried to get rid of Obamacare seventy times, are now claiming that health care is not safe in the hands of the Dems and only THEY can preserve it, flatly contradicting their own actions, knowing that their base will accept it because if they accept what Trump says, they’ll believe anything.
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So that’s the why.
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PAD
I have a cousin, a second uncle, and an acquaintance who responded to the first news of the MAGA bomber by staking out territory in Alex Jones land.
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This was a false flag. It was Democrat operatives working on behalf of and under the orders of the Democrats in order to frame the Republicans and steal an election.
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Look at the bombs, they were never mailed. Besides, how stupid would you have to be to believe the US Post Office was so efficient that they got every “bomb” delivered on the same day?
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Then news broke of new mail bombs showing up the next day and the day after that.
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The Democrats were just so desperate, throwing a couple of even faker looking “bomb” packages out there to cover their mistake of having them all show up at once.
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Then, the same day the latest bombs made news, they arrested a guy.
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Proof it was a false flag or at least the anti-Trump, corrupt FBI covering for the Democrats. There was no way they could have found someone that fast.
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The van? Fake. The pictures on the van? Fake. Too clean, almost new. Not faded, just made and put on there. The FBI found a patsy and framed him to frame Republicans.
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Registered Republican? Trump supporter? Only a few years, obviously a longterm plant to use when ready.
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This is going to backfire on the Dems so bad. This is going to energize the Trump base. Their desperate, false flag “bomb” scam will blow up in their faces when the people prove they’re not stupid enough to believe their lies.
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That’s basically been the path of the last two weeks of their posts on the matter. Two have college degrees, one has two years of college and has been going back to continue his education. All are in the 40s, all are middle-income to upper-middle-income Americans. All of them have been far saner under W. Bush and even under Obama despite some severe derangement issues by two of them, when it came to the former First Lady.
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All three of them had garbage like that showing up in my news feed up through last night and this morning.
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I’d love to say they are an example of the oddities on the matter. Outside of the high level of education for one of them, they aren’t.
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They’ve gone all in. Reality no longer matters. All that matters is what Trump says is reality or what the most extreme ideologues in the Trump supporting media say is true.
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I have watched hundreds of friends, family, and former friends who laughed at stupidity like the Jade Helm nonsense and called Alex Jones a God dámņëd fool completely transform into Alex Jones clones in order to support Trump.
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Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. Their integrity doesn’t matter. Hëll, what they claimed as fact two days ago doesn’t matter. All that matters is whatever they need to say at that moment to defend Trump and their supporter of him.
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Trump can cite the people (alt-right, white nationalist and supremacist groups) that got the permit as his very fine people, but he wasn’t talking about them. Trump can cite the people (chanting vile garbage and marching with torches) from Friday Night, but that’s not who he was talking about. Trump can claim he was looking at pictures and he could tell from pictures that the people (the ones who got the permit and the ones who started marching) he looked at in the pictures were just quietly, peacefully protesting a statue being removed.
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That’s their new reality. It was just some mythical group of people Trump looked at pictures of who were his very fine people.
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There’s a meme that’s been floating around for a while that has a 6 or 9 on it and two people looking at it from opposite sides and calling it different numbers. It says they both can’t be right. It has to be either a 6 or a 9, not both. There are ways the meme outlines to find out the right answer.
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A while back, someone altered the meme. They labeled the two figures as a Democrat and a Republican and doubled the image. The top image has the Dem saying 6 and the Rep saying 9. Over their heads, it says “40 years ago.”
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The bottom picture is labeled as now. The Dem says 6, the Rep says 4.
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That’s where we are under Trump. Republicans look at something that is either a 6 or a 9 and declare it a 4. If you say that’s wrong, you’re a liar because Trump said it’s a 4. If the news media reports that this is a 6 or 9 and not in any way a 4, they’re fake news, the enemy of the poeple, and responsible for violence.
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And they will swear to their last moment that it’s a 4.
Sorry, George, but, as much as I hear and see conservatives running defense for Trump’s comments, it never fails to get a laugh.
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Well your stomach will ache from all the laughing then. Did you read the article you linked to?
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As I said on remember this, Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America.
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It’s fine, you’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?
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You didn’t mention that the mother of the murdered woman thanked Trump for his words. Seems significant.
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“Thank you, President Trump, for those words of comfort and for denouncing those who promote violence and hatred,” Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, said in a statement shortly after Mr. Trump belatedly called out white supremacists and other hate groups during a press conference Monday afternoon.
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Trump speaks without a filter. He is not a seasoned politician. In the real estate business it never mattered what said in meetings, only what was on the final contract. He has never had legions of reporters anxious to catch him in a mistake. And that has been their goal since before he won. When he first took office a journalist reported that he removed the bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office. Trump hadn’t. Someone was standing in front of it. But why report that in the first place? Why would the furnishings of the Oval Office matter anyway? Because removing it would make Trump look bad and so that’s how the reporter wanted the facts to be. Nothing has changed.
Mr. David, I have posted here before how you post opinions as if they were facts, (July 21st), and this is another example. You do not speak for me. You attempted to answer Rene’s question to me and it is wrong on every level. Trump does not hate blacks. He is not a racist. You have to believe that to justify your hatred.
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My answer to Rene is this:
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I defend Trump regardless of all his boorish posts and unfortunate misstatements because he will be appointing Supreme Court justices (more of them), and I like the list of candidates he has revealed. If you want me to support a Democrat, get the party to remove this plank from their platform:
“…we believe that safe abortion must be part of comprehensive maternal and women’s health care and included as part of America’s global health programming.”
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No one has responded to the column I linked to called “This Hitler Nonsense” except Jerry and he only acknowledged it so he could insult the writer. I have to wonder if anyone else read it. It is very impressive and hard to dispute. This is a pertinent point:
He [Hitler] didn’t start out just killing Jews. He started out euthanizing people with special needs …for the betterment of the care-givers’ lives. (You can decide which side of the aisle favors the extermination of “inconvenient” people).
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There was also this point:
He [Hitler] didn’t just suddenly “turn” violent. It was a pattern …as it always is with sociopaths. This is THE most important thing to watch; the violence. I always keep an eye on who is rioting …breaking things …throwing rocks and bombs. It doesn’t make them Nazis. But it signals how far they’re willing to go.
I remember the violent riots and demonstrations on inauguration day.
So yes, I wish Trump would be a bit more “presidential”, but if he was, he wouldn’t be president at all. That’s a trade-off I’ll take.
No, George, I believe because he was prosecuted by the government for refusing to rent to blacks, because he refers to their countries as šhìŧhølëš, and because he has been accused by multiple people of using racial slurs. This isn’t opinion. It IS fact. That you can’t admit it just makes you another follower who has turned off your brain because you absolutely cannot admit that you’re wrong. Won’t do it.
But then I read the rest of your posting and now I get it. You’re a one issue voter, much like gun nuts. Your issue is that women should not be allowed to have final say over their reproductive system. You want it to be like the old days with back alley mutilations with coat hangers. And because you are a one issue candidate, you will willingly say, do and believe anything about your candidate, or even flat out ignore it, because causing women to be tortured is all you care about. Again, fact, not opinion, because women will continue to get abortions whether it’s legal or not. And they will suffer, and you’re okay with that, so QED.
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I now fully understand you and despise you, not for what I thought you were, but for what you are. Thanks for clarifying.
Yes, George. In a frantic, rambling, hyperventilating press conference, he said we should condemn such groups. Then he said those very people weren’t those people, he identified the groups who got the permit and the Friday night crew as who he was talking about, and he called those people very fine people.
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The people who he said weren’t white supremacists and neo-Nazis were, in fact, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The people who obtained the permits were affiliated to white nationalists and white supremacists. The people who gathered to protest Friday night were not quiet, and, after they did their semi-quiet bit, grabbed torches and marched and chanted antisemitic, anti-immigrant rants. The key speakers Friday, the day Trump pointed to, were white supremacists.
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Trump literally cut a reporter off and said that those people (the white supremacists) “didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis” and then called the white supremacists very fine people.
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You can stand on your head, look at reality through Trump colored glasses and deny it, and just keep repeating nonsense all you want, but his entire speech (especially the video of it) and the facts (that the orange dûmbášš apparently didn’t know or chose to ignore when speaking) are against you here.
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And you want to talk about responses to Trump’s press conference?
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“Trump’s defense of the ‘very fine people’ at Charlottesville white nationalist march has David Duke gushing”
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https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/donald-trump-david-duke-charlottesville/index.html
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He wasn’t the only one. A lot of the white nationalist and white supremacist groups got a tingle up their legs after that press conference, and they were very vocal about how happy they were with how Trump played the gan=me for them.
Oh, and, George… Really?!? You really want to And you want to bring up the victim’s mother who just tried to be civil and leave it alone when the press first approached her and she hadn’t actually seen but only then heard about the comments? Maybe you missed what happened next. The victim’s mother fully retracted her statement of appreciation for Trump’s comments in response to both actually seeing the press conference and seeing his continued backpedaling and assertions that the victims of the attack were just as much to blame as the white supremacists themselves.
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“The mother of the woman killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend said she is not interested in hearing from the President because she believes he equated her daughter to white supremacists.”
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“I’m not talking to the President now,” Susan Bro said Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I’m sorry. After what he said about my child, and it’s not that I saw somebody else’s tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters like Ms. (Heather) Heyer with the KKK and the white supremacists.”
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“And Bro says that after seeing the news conference, it’s too late for apologies.
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“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m not forgiving for that,” she added.
Asked if there was something she wanted to say to the President, Bro said, “Think before you speak.”
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https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/politics/heather-heyer-susan-bro-donald-trump/index.html
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Good job being a Trump Republican, George, you’ve got it down pat for sure. Never tell a complete truth when a partial truth will do, and never tell the story past the point where it changes the narrative to one you can’t use.
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Oh No! Peter David despises me! How can I ever go on?
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You must despise a lot of people who are Pro-Life; Dr. Alveda King for one. She is Martin Luther King’s niece who calls legalized abortion a “black genocide.”
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Ah yes, back alley abortions and coat hangers. The go-to argument for denying the humanity of a class of people.
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Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist and co-founder of NARAL, also later admitted that their “statistics” about back alley abortions were false.
Nathanson said NARAL often claimed between 5,000 and 10,000 women died every year from dangerous, back alley abortions and argued that legalizing abortions would protect women in America.
He wrote: “I confess that I knew that the figures were totally false and I suppose that others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted … The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible.”
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The report also cited a 1972 Center for Disease Control report that placed the death rate from illegal abortions at a grand total of 39 in 1972, just one year before Roe v. Wade.
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https://www.mrctv.org/blog/scare-tactics-sen-feinsteins-back-alley-abortion-stats-are-wildly-false
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Of course 39 deaths is 39 too many but it isn’t either legalized infanticide or coat hangers in a back alley. There are other options. The woman could have the baby for example.
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A writer you probably also despise, Andrew Klavan, says this:
There will come a time when the people who run Planned Parenthood will be viewed as we view slaveholders today. Today, you hear young people say, “Why should we listen to the people of the past? Why should we admire their accomplishments? They held slaves. They were racists. They conquered other nations. Who cares what books they wrote? What discoveries they made? What governments they created? They owned people. They owned human beings as property. Why should we do anything but despise them?”
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In the future, young people will say, “Who cares about 21st century technology? Those people murdered their babies. The very mothers who should have nurtured them had them torn out of their wombs piece by piece, their bodies sold in parts. Why should we admire their computers and phones? Their spaceships to Pluto? The medicines they discovered that we still use today? They killed their children. The very fathers who should have protected them, turned their backs and left them to die. Babies with no voice, no vote, no way to protect themselves. Those people slaughtered them just to insure they could have sex whenever they wanted, with whomever they wanted, without consequence to themselves. For their pleasure and convenience, they murdered millions and millions and millions.”
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The young have no pity. They have no compassion. They feel them, but they don’t have them. That only comes with time. The people of the 18th century saw themselves as the forgers of new ideas and new nations and new ideas for nations. The young take all those things for granted. They see the men and women of the past only as slaveholders and racists and conquerors. Which they also were.
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We see ourselves as inventing new machines, new medicines, new art forms, connecting human minds in new ways. The young of the future will take all those things for granted. They’ll see us as the slaughterers of the helpless, the butcherers of the silent, the small, the weak. The cannibals of our own children.
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Which we also are.
Alveda King? You mean the person who frequently says dumb things, is at odds with her own family, and tried to push the lie that MLK was a registered Republican who supported Republican ideas so dimwits like her buddy Glenn Beck could make conservatives who were dumb enough to believe him about anything even dumber?
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Yeah… Good pick, George.
I see I haven’t made myself sufficiently clear, George.
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You oppose a resolution that is concerned about the safety of women in order to have a procedure they very likely hate having, but emotionally need to. How can you presume to quote how the future will feel when you can’t even grasp the realities of the present, posting lengthy responses that refute nothing I said, but instead what you claimed I said.
The number of people who have died from unsafe abortions is absolutely irrelevant. Indeed, I never even brought up the aspect of death. This is, as is not atypical for you, something that YOU brought up and then attacked. The problem is that abortions that are not done safely can and have done extreme damage to the women who had them. Yes, some died. I’m sure that many others suffered from internal bleeding and even lost the ability to have children later in their lives. In any event, abortions MUST be medically protected, and the fact that you are opposed to that once again proves you to be an uncaring bášŧárd.
By the way, I just did about thirty seconds of research. Since you’re bringing up death, turns out the estimation of 39 is just a tad low. When considering the world, 68,000–that’s sixty eight thousand–women die in the world annually from illegal abortions. I suspect the number will skyrocket in the US if your idiots have their way. You can read more about it here.
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So I’m done with you.
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PAD
George –
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You know that I am that exotic creature in American politics – the left-leaning Pro-Lifer. It’s not such a rare position in my native country of Brazil, where most mainstream left parties are still Pro-Life.
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But if I had to vote in the USA, I’d still choose Democrat. I believe all human life to be sacred and all humans to be brothers, and Democrats still are more inclined in that direction, despite their Pro-Choice stance. Republicans have positions in too many issues that reduce human life to a commodity in a dog-eat-dog world (guns, death penalty, uncontrolled capitalism, inequality, environment, immigration).
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But yeah, I have more respect for your Pro-Life position than Jerry and PAD. But you didn’t answer my question, you only explained why you voted for Trump, not why you feel you have to defend Trump.
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One problem in modern politics, particularly evident in right-wingers, is this need to defend your own “team” in every and all cases.
Oh, I have respect for it, I simply don’t agree with it.
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If given the option, I would hope that no woman ever had to make that choice and no abortions ever happened. But, I realize that this is my choice for me.
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I recognize the reality of situations that threaten the life of a woman or the matter of a woman being raped and not being able to emotionally or mentally deal with carrying to term.
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My personal position is pro-life, but I know that my choice is not mine to force on someone else. So I vote pro-choice, because many pro-choice people actually feel as I do, and the myth of abortion on demand as birth control for women who like to keep getting pregnant and keep getting abortions as if they were as minor a deal as getting their nails done is just that- a myth the right pushes as if it’s the norm in Planned Parenthood is clinics or the desired goal of the left.
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I also find most of the active political right in the pro-life camp to come across as dishonest religious fanatics. Their position often boios down to- “Women must suffer this burden, because my God says so.” And they often like to support their positions.
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Nope. Their god has no place in this discussion.
Rene,
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I appreciate your honest questions and your professed Pro-Life position. If you were an American and wanted to run for office as a Democrat, you would get no support from the party. In fact, you would be discouraged. Yes, all human life is sacred and all humans are brothers. And yes, some Republican positions, especially the death penalty, which I oppose, do seem to be in opposition to the Pro-Life stance. The problem is that all those issues you list will never apply to those who not allowed to be born in the first place. That is why it is my primary political stance.
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As to why I am compelled to defend Trump, the answer was in my post on the 4th; the Supreme Court nominees. Trumps list of nominees are likely to be Pro-Life. They can’t admit this of course because Democrats think that Roe v Wade is settled law and never to be challenged. Of course. Dred Scott was settled law. Prohibition was settled law. I don’t know if you are old enough to remember what happened to Robert Bork. So that is why I voted for him. Defending him just comes with the territory. Should I be content to say, “Well, he’s the president, I don’t have to stick my neck out.”? That would be cowardly. The entire shameful Kavanaugh hearings were all about abortion. Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JActJAL_Lug&t=77s
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As for this: I now fully understand you and despise you, not for what I thought you were, but for what you are. I consider it badge of honor.
John 15:18
Jerry –
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I support a few exceptions. The law of my country about abortion makes special provisons for rape (particularly rape of minors by a relative), risk of life for the mother, or fetuses with a few specific conditions that would make survival impossible.
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I’m also very much not in agreement with other typical Pro-Life positions, like opposition to sex for pleasure, opposition to other contraceptive methods, support for traditional gender roles, etc. And I am in support of a generous welfare state that will not force poor women to starve to feed their newborns.
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And yeah, I’m certainly not going to get all self-righteous and judgemental about women who have had abortions. I’ll never condemn specific women. I recognize that it always will be a hard decision. But I still find myself unable to endorse laws that make abortion legal in most cases.
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George –
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Yeah, one of my disagreements with the New Left is that I don’t like how they’re urging Democrats to toe the line on abortion. My opposition to abortion is both a moral position and a strategic position. I believe the issue of abortion has hurt leftwing parties by alienating working class voters and non-white voters who would otherwise be much more attracted to economic policies that lean left.
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Other Liberal social issues, like LGBT rights, eventually gain ground with the mainstream public. But I feel Pro-Choice will always remain that issue that half of the population will never stomach.
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As for Trump, I don’t think not defending him is a matter of cowardice. Just a matter of intelectual honesty and consistency. I have voted for candidates that I thought were the least horrible alternative, and still kept disagreeing with much of their positions when they were not my positions, and did not try to defend them when I knew they were wrong on specific points.
“As to why I am compelled to defend Trump, the answer was in my post on the 4th; the Supreme Court nominees. Trumps list of nominees are likely to be Pro-Life.””
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TRANSLATION
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“Fûçk the country and the people Trump’s idiocy hurts, I have my ideology to ram down throats.”
PAD, there’s one thing you forgot about: Trump’s plan to send the US military to “defend” our borders against the upcoming caravan. For some reason, his fans/supporters in the Southwest (and elsewhere) don’t seem to have a problem with the idea of thousands of ARMED military personnel being sent to their backyards. But, when President Obama approved the “Jade Helm 15” operation (back in 2015), these same people were spinning all sorts of conspiracy theories that this was going to lead to right-wingers being rounded up and sent to camps as well as an effort to seize guns and other arms from citizens.
You’ve noted the reason for the difference in reactions yourself: Obama’s Jade Helm was (so they believe) “going to lead to right-wingers being rounded up and sent to camps”. While Trump’s plan is to have Hispanics being rounded up and sent to camps.
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For Trump’s fans, Trump is targeting “those people” and that’s OK.
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They have no objection to the actions, just who it’s aimed against.